This invention relates to emergency evacuation equipment for aircraft, in particular, to inflatable aircraft emergency evacuation slides.
The conventional method of quickly evacuating a large number of passengers from an aircraft in an emergency is to provide multiple emergency exits, each of which is equipped with an inflatable evacuation slide. These inflatable evacuation slides are normally stored in an uninflated condition in a container, or slide pack, requiring a minimum of space in the interior of the aircraft. The slide pack is typically attached to a packboard mounted on or adjacent to the interior of the aircraft exit door. In a conventional aircraft evacuation slide system, the operation of which is described among other places in U.S. Pat. No. 4,441,582 to Ward, if the aircraft exit door is opened in the “armed” condition, the entire slide pack to falls to the sill of the aircraft. As the door is moved further away from the doorway the slide pack falls out of the doorway toward the ground. As the slide pack falls toward the ground, a lanyard is tensioned to withdraw a pin from the key loop of a series of interlaced loops commonly referred to as “daisy chain” lacing. Withdrawal of the pin from the key loop of the daisy chain lacing causes the lacing to unravel releasing the slide from the slide pack for inflation.
Prior art methods of storing a fold uninflated evacuation slide within a pack closed by conventional daisy chains lacing have proved adequate for small to moderate sized inflation slides. Conventional daisy chain lacing, however, does not reliably release under the strain of large, tight slide packs or slides that have been stored for a protracted period of time. Accordingly, what is needed is a method of lacing an aircraft evacuation slide that reliably releases under all conditions.